THE LITTLE DEATH

You could be forgiven for thinking from the opening scenes of this new comedy from Australian actor turned director Josh Lawson that you are about to watch a movie that is like a Wikipedia of sexual practices, or even some soft-core pornography. Thankfully it is neither of those although Mr. Lawson does want us to laugh at the absurdity of fulfilling sexual fantasies, which never ever turn out like you had dreamed and wished for.

These then are the totally separate stories of five couples and the tenuous link to them is the fact that they all live in the same suburb neighborhood, and they are all white and middle-class. The first concerns Maeve who confides to Paul her live-in boyfriend that she has a rape fantasy, which he is as reluctant to comply with as he is with proposing marriage.  Evie and Dan’s marriage has hit a rocky patchy so the Counselor they consult suggest role-playing to spice things up a bit.  The trouble is that Dan gets so into it he quickly forgets why the started doing this as he is now completely obsessed with becoming an actor so he can play dress-up every day.

Richard and Rowena have been trying to have a baby for so long that sex has become a monotonous chore, for Rowena anyway. That is until her husband gets really bad news and bursts into tears and she suddenly discovers she has dacryphilia (that thankfully is explained on screen).  It means that she gets sexually aroused at the sight of tears, which is harmless enough until she finds has to plot to constantly keep Richard sad enough to weep whenever she fancies getting laid.  It is an odd condition, but not quite as potentially objectionable as the somnophilia that Paul has when he drugs his nagging wife Maureen so that when she is passed out, he can finally have sex with her.

The fifth and final … and by far the best scenario …. is of a couple of strangers who have not met in person. Monica works as a signing translator for deaf people wanting to make phone calls, and one night Sam calls into use the service.  He wants to be connected to a sex line and poor Monica has to be the conduit for the funny and bawdy language that passes between the ‘working girl’ and Sam a cute young graphic novelist.  Despite it’s set up it has the most tenderness of all of the scenarios because of the very real chemistry between both the caller and the operator, and it is such a genuine connection. 

There is one other tenuous link between this group of vignettes in the shape of a new neighbor who is going around introducing himself. Whilst handing over welcoming gifts he slips into the conversation that fact that he is a Registered Sex Offender, but every household he calls on is so wrapped up in their own problems that the last part simply doesn’t sink in.  Just when you think he may get back to his old ways, Lawson finishes him off.  We had expected something fatal to happen because of the title (changed in the UK to ‘A Funny Kind of Love’) and he is one of the ‘little deaths’.

The movie ends up being more bizarre than bawdy although it does heavily on the basic assumption that many people who find sex funny will find this movie comical too.  The troubles are that the laughs are rather intermittent and some regarding the whole concept of non-consensual intercourse are bordering on being offensive and in extremely bad taste.

As well as giving himself a plum part (Paul) Lawson does pepper the piece with an extremely talented cast of well-know Australian actors.  Particular mention to the pitch performances from TJ Power and newcomer Erin James as Sam and Monica. By placing their story last in the proceedings it did at least mean the movie ends on a much higher note than the one it started on.

★★★★★★★

ACTRESS

Brandy Burre is a character actress .... or rather was one when she appeared in the third and fourth season of HBO's The Wire some eight years ago. Now she is a housewife and the mother of two small children living quite a comfortable existence in suburban Beacon in upstate New York with her restaurateur boyfriend Tim.   This new film on her life now can hardly be called a fly-on-the-wall documentary however as Burre, ever the actress, cannot help but play up to the camera at times when she sees to forget that this is actually her real life and is not just yet another role that she has been cast to play. 

Shot (and edited) by Robert Greene, who also happens to be Burre's next door neighbor and friend. it focuses on her desire to get back to work.  Sitting on a beanbag in the children's room on her own sorting out their toys she sighs out loud 'I'm not acting, so this is my creative outlet, I guess'.  She does in fact get some gigs singing with a band, and is also seen discussing potential work on the phone, but neither of these things lead to anything else.

Filmed making rather a drama out of simple daily domestic tasks, Burre also uses her two infant children as her audience when she openly discusses life with them as if they are adults.  She is faced with little choice as Tim steers clear of the filming, and finally from her when he  chooses to move out.  She talks through this all out loud on camera rather melodramatically and although she avoids explaining the reason for his decision, it is apparent that he had discovered that she has been unfaithful. She nevertheless uses his silence to cry 'pity me 'into the camera as she is determined to be the martyr of the piece. 

Despite Greene's brave attempt to paint a flattering portrait of someone who has 'suffered' by giving up her 'art' to be an unselfish mother and spouse he completely fails as there no real evidence that her career was the unqualified success that she recalls to anyone like her hairdresser who is forced to listen. At the same time Burre fails to disguise the basic fact that she is so completely self-centered and unquestionable selfish, qualities that seem to be essential requisites in her eyes to return to acting again.

Greene makes uncomfortable voyeurs of us all particularly because he fails to make us like Burre at all.  He finishes the movie with no real conclusion as to what Burre's future will actually turn out to be , but you do get this real sense, even in his small bachelor apartment on his own, that Tim at least is so much better off now.

★★★★★

SHE'S THE BEST THING IN IT

Veteran character actor Mary Louise Wilson starts this affectionate portrait on her life with what she claims are the five basic stages of acting:

1) Who is Mary Louise Wilson?

2) Get me Mary Louise Wilson?

3) Get me a Mary Louise Wilson type;

4) Get me a young Mary Louise Wilson.

5) Who was Mary Louise Wilson?

The Tony Award winner is disarmingly honest about the ups and downs of her long career, which has now brought her at the age of 79 leaving New York after 60 years to go back to New Orleans to teach her first acting class.  Winning a Tony for her performance in ‘Grey Gardens’ in a role that had been specifically written for her had been a curse. Since then the phone had stopped ringing with any offers as Broadway producers assume that as a character actor she would now be too expensive, but even that doesn’t seem to suppress her good-natured humor or make the twinkle in her eye disappear.

Mary Louise is however a rather rare bird in her profession having hated her stint in Hollywood playing in lucrative television sitcoms and hot-footing it out of there when she got too miserable.  She found solace in the theater, plus drinking half a bottle of wine every night, and getting married.  The latter to an actor who landed a role on Broadway in Man Of La Mancha. ‘I saw the Show and said this is a bomb, but it lasted longer than our two year marriage.’  She admitted finding her sobriety 18 years ago, but refused to talk any more about any other likely romance.

Then at the age of 69, Mary Louise and Mark Hampton wrote ‘Full Gallop’ a one-woman play about fashion doyenne Diana Vreeland that garnered her several awards and a major boost to her career. It also led to her Tony Nominated performance in Cabaret two years later.

Now back in New Orleans, even though the acting classes take a while to really kick in, when they do it is obvious that Mary Louise not only is in seventh heaven surrounded by all these 20 year old students, but that she has a real flair for infusing them with her energy, enthusiasm and her well-crafted acting techniques.  As teacher and pupils bond, Mary Louise appreciates that she is really well suited for the role even though she may have arrived more at it initially by fault than design.

This first feature documentary directed by Ron Nyswaner (Oscar-nominated Writer/Producer 'The Philadelphia Story') also asks other female actors for their take on their profession including Melissa Leo, Estella Parsons, Charlotte Rae and Valerie Harper. The best quote however comes from Frances McDormand who simply described her own very successful career as ‘I have been supporting male protagonists in movies and television and plays for 30 years and so you kind of end up being a character actor by default sometimes.’

The movie is at best uneven and because one cannot help but be so charmed by Mary Louise, you simply knows that she deserves a better profile than this. Hers may not be a name that is instantly recognized by every theatergoer or movie/TV watcher, but the instant you catch sight of her, you remember exactly where you saw her in a performance that you admired and probably really loved.

The title of the documentary is explained at the end. Having recently lost her sister, after losing her gay brother to AIDS some decades ago, Mary Louise is visiting the cemetery where her family is buried to reveal that she already has her own tombstone ready for the day she joins them.  It simply reads 'Mary Louise Wilson : She Was The Best Thing In It.'

★★★★★★★★

She's The Best Thing In It Trailer from She's The Best Thing In It on Vimeo.

BROOKLYN

Home maybe where the heart is but in the early 1950's in rural Ireland with work so scarce, this is a luxury that few young people can afford. Twenty-something-year-old Eilis can only find herself a two hour stint on a Sunday after Mass behind the counter of the village Provisions Store run by Miss Kelly, the local scrooge. So the Church pulls some strings for her and arranges a passage to Brooklyn which is packed full of Irish immigrants, and as it includes a place to stay and a job,  it is an offer that Eilis reluctantly accepts .

She ends up in a small boarding house for working girls run by a strict and opinionated Mrs Kehoe (played hilariously by scene-stealing Julie Walters). Eilis's job is as a sales clerk in a rather grand department store where she feels like a fish out of water and very alienated. The only person she knows is the local Parish Priest who is also from her home town of Enniscorthy, County Wexford, and it is he that gets her out of her depression by suggesting she attend night school classes to learn accounting to qualify for a better job.

Father Flood also encourages her to go with the other girls from the Boarding House to the very tame Saturday Dance to meet people. And she does just that ... his name is Tony and he is a very affable handsome Italian plumber who has penchant for pretty Irish girls. He is not nearly as bright and articulate as Eilis but he is not only charming and kind, he is also obviously very quickly totally smitten. When their relationship starts to get serious he suggests taking Eilis to meet his large family which she only accepts once she has taken some private lessons from one of the other girls at Mrs Kehoe's on how to eat pasta for the first time without making a mess. She need not have worried as the meal is a big success, even though Tony's much younger brother suddenly blurts out that Italians don't like the Irish.

This Italian does however and when Eilis gets the shocking news that her sister Rose has died and she decides to go home to be with her mother, Tony persuades her to marry him to be sure that she will return.  After a night of passion, they slip in to City Hall and get wed without telling a single soul, and then Eilis sets sail for Ireland.

Once home everyone simply assumes that as she is single that she is back for good and her best friend Nancy, who is about to get married, literally throws Eilis into the arms of Jim the most eligible bachelor in the whole County. She is even offered her sister's old well paid job as a bookkeeper. Weeks pass and Eilis is really conflicted as she loves back being in the wide open countryside that she knows so well, and her widowed mother now only has her for company too. She is on the verge of discarding her old life in the New World to start a new one in the old world when Miss Kelly her vindictive old employer tries to cause some mischief which backfires, but it inadvertently sets a determined course for Eilis once and for all.

This enchanting  drama is directed rather lovingly by Irish theater director turned filmmaker John Crowley from a script from Oscar-nominated Brit writer Nick Hornby ('An Education') based on the best selling novel by Colm Toibin who was himself a native of Enniscorthy.  The attention to detail is flawless. Period dramas are a genre that indie movies usually avoid as they are generally too expensive to mount. However what is particular engaging in this instance is that as well portraying the era of mass emigration so perfectly, it more importantly captures the genuine angst that young Eilis dealt with by being torn between life and love in these two such different changing worlds.

Superb performances from a very impressive cast led by Saoirse Ronan in her first 'grown-up' role who simply shines as the young country Irish lass who loses her innocence and finds love,  and Emory Cohen who is pitch perfect as the shy simple plumber who courted her with such charm and politeness.  There is a point when Eilis is still reluctant to respond to Tony's advances and she confides to one of more worldly boarders at Mrs Kehoe's.  'Does he just talk about baseball and his mother?' she is asked. 'No, not at all.''Then grab him, he's a very rare Italian.'

It's a rare movie that will be not just a big popular crowd pleaser but also one that is bound to gather more than it's fair share of Awards.

★★★★★★★★★

A LITTLE CHAOS

Poor Monsieur Le Notre.  The King is giving him a hard time to design the most perfect gardens in the world and within budget, and at the same his feckless wife is playing fast and loose with every young man she can afford to pay for her carnal pleasure.  Then to top it all the best plans submitted to him for a outdoor ballroom are designed by a woman!

The year is 1962, and Louis XIV known as the Sun King is building his extravagant Palace at Versailles in which he is planning to move his entire Court from Paris. The King is getting anxious as the whole project has taken years and he is definitely running out of patience, and maybe money too.  Le Notre his chief landscape architect is under pressure to ensure that 'Heaven shall be there' as decreed, so taking a gamble he rejects all the presentations from the country's leading male landscapers, and settles on the scheme of the totally unknown Madame de Barra.

Madame is a young (ish) widow and has a sad back story to justify why she is trying to hold down a job in this man's world. At first things are frosty between her and the broody Le Notre who is a man of few words at best, but soon he very slowly reveals that he has designs on her body and as well as her body of her work.  When Madame Le Notre discovers this even though she has no hope of winning her husband's affection back, she is determined that Madame de Barra doesn't get them either, so she plots to put a dampener on their budding relationship.  Literally.

Meanwhile the common born Madame de Barra is like a fish out water amidst the scheming superficial and over-dressed aristocratic courtesans but in an accidental meeting she attracts the attention of the King. He is alone and grieving for his recently deceased Queen, but is quickly captivated by the straight-talking Madame de Barra which sets the seal of approval for her new garden, even though it really was never in any doubt.

The trouble with this well-meaning lavishly produced French costume drama is that it all seemed so frightfully English.  Shot in the English countryside with a totally English cast (save for a lone Belgian and one American) and with an English (and Irish) scriptwriter and director too, there was barely a hint of anything 'francais'. 

Starring Kate Winslet who as usual puts in a stunning performance as the tough single-minded Sabina de Barra and she doesn't even wince once when she has to churn out some lines that are much more suited to a contemporary soap-opera e.g. describing La Notre 'He is the most complete person I know.'

Co-starring with her is Matthias Schoenearts who seemed totally stunned at times as he played her erstwhile lover with almost a complete lack of emotion, unlike Stanley Tucci playing the King's bisexual brother who just camped his way up through the whole thing. Louis was played by Alan Rickman who was also behind the camera for a second time (the first being 'A Winters Guest' back in 1997) and he gave himself one of the best scenes in the movie with his surprise encounter with Madam de Barra in the garden. 

The oddest thing was at the end of this two hour long drama with all it's hype of what an excellent gardener Madam de Barra was, there was barely a single plant to be seen in her finished project.  A tad disconceting and disappointing, a little like the whole movie itself. 

★★★★★★

THE SALT OF THE EARTH

Wim Wender's Oscar nominated profile on the Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist Sebastião Salgado is one of the most illuminating and deeply moving portraits of an artist to hit the screen in a very long time. Co-directed by Salgado's son Juliano Ribeiro it focuses on the celebrated photographer's extraordinary body of work with its powerful images that make the scant commentary that Wender provides at times complete superfluous.

It opens with Salgado's most recognized images from the Sierra Palada mine that were part of his 'Worker' series of the 1980's. They set the pace for some extraordinary breathtaking photographs that will haunt you for the next couple of hours, and remain with you long after that.  Like so many of the projects Salgado chooses to record, the sheer scale of the extremes that humanity go to survive are for the most part incomprehensible to accept and understand.  In this particular instance this multitude of miners are risking their lives for the possibility of riches, but when it comes to the projects that he covered with Doctors without Borders, the only focus of the subjects he captures with his lens are simply to stay alive against all the impossible odds.

'The Sabel: the End of the Road'  project was Salgado's first major exploration of whole communities suffering from deprivation.  He followed that with 'Exodus' which was a record of the misplacement of several populations through famine and war, concluding with the atrocities of the civil war in Rwanda.  This, he related on camera, left him psychologically scarred by the what he witnessed, but his words were unnecessary as we could see his pain in the devastating images that he photographed at the time.

Throughout his life since his political views made him and Leila, his wife and collaborator, flee their native Brazil because of their political views, Salgado has left his family for years at time to follow his passions. They were to capture humanity often at its worst and compile a remarkable record of some of the world's most violent scenes of misery of the past few decades. Wender notes that some critics such as Susan Sontag have accused Salgado of making his work into aestheticized objects for Western consumption but they are simply misreading and unnecessary over -intellectualising the fact that as an artist (and a really superb one at that) he just cannot fail to bring a strength and even a dignity to even the most harrowing of subjects.

Watching the movie wind its way through Salgado's whole body of work is in itself an intense experience and in Wenders he has found the most perfect soul mate to help share his experiences. Wenders adds some brilliant touches such as photographing the photographer and blending Salgado's own image with that of the photograph he is discussing at the time which adds such an intensity.

When the Salgados happily returned to Brazil after the eventual change of government they find  his aged parents still living on the family farm that has been ravaged by the both the droughts and the wholesale destruction of the rain forests.  When they first mention their plans to restore it all back to how it was original decades ago by planting over a million trees it seems that this scheme is so ludicrously extreme that it can only be a wild fantasy.  By then however. Wenders has made us appreciate the extraordinary commitment and selfless determination of Salgado, and equally important of Leila too, that it comes as no real surprise that they succeed in this ridiculous plan which eventually extends far beyond their own lands now.

Salgardo says at one point 'We are a ferocious animal. We humans are terrible animals. Our history is a history of wars. It's an endless story, a tale of madness.'  By choosing to finish the documentary with the creation of Instituto Terra, Wender does at least a positive footnote to end on as after all man's inhumanity to man that Salgado has focused on so far, it gives us some hope that all is not totally lost.  

A worthy winner of three Awards at the Cannes Film Festival and a César from the French Film Academy, it is the perfect portrait of a remarkable artist and an exceptional human being.

★★★★★★★★★★

FELIX AND MEIRA

This unexpected and unconventional love story starts off with the most random of encounters when Felix a perpetual womaniser cannot stop himself hitting up the sad looking attractive Hassidic woman waiting with her baby to pick up her food order in a delicatessen. There is no reaction from her at all or any real connection between the two of them and we assume that is the full sum of it.  Meira is a young wife trapped in her traditional Jewish marriage and although she is committed to her faith and actually likes her husband, she bitterly resents the fact that she is entrenched in a way of life in which she knows that she is not cut out for. Instead of being the obedient dutiful spouse who should be breeding a large family and settling down, she is surreptitiously taking birth control pills and having some fun on the side listening to the jazz and practising her art despite promising her frustrated husband that she would cease both.

Another chance meeting in the snow covered streets of the predominately Jewish quarter in Montreal where they both live, and Felix and Meira discover they have a common interest in art.  It will take them longer to realise that they are also both floundering wretchedly unhappy in their own different worlds. Whilst Meira struggles with wanting to be free and single, Felix already something of a drifter, has been unsettled by the unreconciled differences he had with his wealthy distant father who had just died.

Miera's husband annoyed at having to constantly explain her erratic behaviour to their community and anxious to try and control her, decides to 'banish' her to stay in Brooklyn with his female cousin and as a punishment, forbids her to take their only child along It is the final straw that actually pushes her into Felix's arms for up to now their very constrained friendship has been very circumspect even though there is obvious a much deeper and romantic connection between the two of them. 

Although this is a contemporary story there is very much an old-fashioned feeling to it all mainly due to the whole traditional lifestyle that Miera is part off, right down to the gentle ineffectual way her husband physically attacks Felix once he discovers the affair. The wintry setting of a rather cold and forbidding looking Mile End area adds to  the bleakness of their situations. It makes the whole concept of this originally unlikely seeming relationship become a reality when both of these two lonely souls sense the possibility that life need not be quite so empty. What may have started out simply as a diversion from their unhappy lives gradually evolves into a real romance once they both let their guards down and the chemistry kicks in.

The remarkable aspect is that this burgeoning relationship is portrayed in an almost chaste manner on screen, but there are some powerful intimate moments such as when Meira tries on some tight fitting jeans for the first time, or when Felix eventually gently takes off Meira's wig, which add such a fierce intensity. It is greatly helped by some remarkably compelling performances both from Hadas Yaron the young Israeli actress whose breakthrough role was as another Hassidic wife in the stunning 'Fill The Void' and also from Martin Dubreuil an experienced actor who is little known outside his native Canada (although this movie will change all that). The pair so convincingly capture the essence of these two unfulfilled strangers who finally discover some purpose and happiness in this forbidden friendship which turns into something far beyond what either had dreamed off.

Credit also to French-Canadian writer/director Maxime Giroux for among other things making Meira's abandoned husband such a accepting character that despite his bitterness/sadness at losing his wife showing that he genuinely loved he and truly wanted her to be happy even if in the end it meant leaving him.  It was a refreshing twist to the plot.

Felix & Meira is a very melancholic love story and even when the couple are finally together there is still this fine veil of sadness that never quite dissipates. It is though a really exquisite movie and utterly beautiful to watch evolve.

★★★★★★★★